


Cold Comfort

by BurningTea



Series: Season 9 Fic [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Caring Nora, Cas has a cold, Coda, Episode: s09e06 Heaven Can't Wait, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sick Castiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-02
Updated: 2016-05-02
Packaged: 2018-06-05 23:18:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6727447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurningTea/pseuds/BurningTea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel becomes friends with Nora after the events of 9x06. When he comes down with a cold, Nora insists on helping him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cold Comfort

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ExpatGirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExpatGirl/gifts).



> This is for my poorly ExpatGirl, but I think it may have gone a bit me. By which I mean maybe more about Cas having reactions to what he's lost than I meant it to have for a cute little 'Cas having a cold fic'. Eh. Never mind.

Nora fusses over his hand when she sees him the next day, insisting he let her know if he needs anything, and Castiel nods and smiles and hides his confusion. Dean wrapped his hand, told him to keep it supported for a while, and it isn’t affecting Castiel’s ability to work. Not too much. He can manage. He isn’t sure why Nora’s concerned.

He isn’t sure why she keeps glancing at him, an odd little smile on her face, either, but he tells himself he still has a lot to learn about human humour and goes to restock the shelves at the back of the shop. 

“So,” Nora says, sliding up to him when he’s just lining up boxes of painkillers.

He pauses, but that seems to be all she has to say.

“So what?” he asks, looking for any clues in her expression.

Her eyes are perhaps a shade wider than usual, and that smile still sits on her face, the kind that twitches the muscles at the edges of the mouth but doesn’t bloom fully. There’s a warmth to her, today, even more so than normal.

“So,” Nora says, and sways towards him, her shoulder nudging at his arm, just for a second. 

But she doesn’t look like she wants him to move out of the way. 

“I’m sorry,” Cas says at last. He hates this, hates the feeling he’s missing something, but no-one handed him a guide-book when he found himself thrust so abruptly into humanity. “I don’t know what you want.”

Nora’s smile falters, sliding into something that might be confusion.

“I just thought you might want to talk,” she says, and her voice is softer, which doesn’t seem to fit being unhappy with Castiel failing to understand her. 

“What about?” he asks. 

It’s not that he doesn’t want to talk. He does. He’s been finding it harder and harder, keeping his words inside his head. Something about being human, perhaps, or maybe it’s that the echoing space left by the songs of the Host needs filling. 

Nora shrugs, and takes a half-step back. She has her hands in her pockets, now, and leans against the nearest shelf, her head tilted at an angle.

“Whatever you want,” she says. “How’s your hand doing? What happened on the latest episode of your favourite show? Any gossip about that hot guy who came to babysit with you?”

Hot guy. 

“You mean…?” Castiel trails off.

He can’t remember what story Dean gave Nora. He remembers the searing pain in his wrist, and the worry that his greater pain had brought danger to the child in his care. He remembers worry, too, over the fever, until Dean assured him it was easily solved with the air of someone who’s put in the hours panicking by themselves over an infant. He remembers Nora running in, her expression melting from tension to unfiltered love as she saw her child safe and sleeping. 

But Castiel wasn’t the one to explain Dean’s presence. He should have been. It was his duty, after all, to protect and care for Tanya, and any guard duty always involves checking the names and reliability of those admitted. Still, he was shaken and Dean spoke to Nora before Castiel could, and it seemed so much easier to let Dean handle it.

Human pain really is much harder to ignore, to think past, than the pain he felt as an angel.

Nora’s nodding.

“Dean. Yeah. He said you wouldn’t need to stay at my place because he’d be keeping a close watch on you.”

And she winks. Castiel wishes he could replay the moment to be sure, but…

“Did you just wink?” he asks, before he can stop himself. 

“Sorry,” Nora says, but her mouth is twitching again, like she wants to laugh, though Castiel can’t imagine what’s funny about finding a strange man in your home. “It was just so cute. But, I suppose that… Shit. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

She looks genuinely worried.

“Why would that offend me?” Castiel asks. 

He needs to get a notebook and start noting down his observations, if only so he can look back over them and try to work out what he’s missing. 

Nora shrugs.

“Well, you know, I don’t want to come across like I think your love-life’s entertainment or anything,” she says, and she really does sound worried she’s upset him. 

And…love-life? For the first time since the adrenaline wore off from the fight, Castiel feels something more strongly than he feels the pain in his wrist. Surprise. It’s not the story he’d have expected Dean to use, but if Dean has told Nora that he and Cas have, well, something romantic going on, he has to follow Dean’s lead. Doesn’t he?

“Oh,” he says. “Yeah. That.”

Nora’s frowning now.

“He did, right? Keep an eye on you?”

“Oh. Um. Yeah. Yeah, he did.”

And it’s not even a lie. Not really. Dean watched Castiel almost the whole time Castiel was awake, except for when he ran out to get food for them both. Castiel isn’t sure it counts as being cared for so much as studied, perhaps found wanting, but Dean did take care of the injury. 

“Good,” Nora says. “And did he drop you off this morning? I’ve got to say, if I managed to bend my wrist back in a fall I’d have trouble getting in to work.”

Ah. She’s worrying Castiel might not make it in for his shifts. He hastens to reassure her.

“I can walk to work,” he says. “I normally do.”

As though he ever does anything but walk through from the store-room, but he’s worked out it’s best to pretend he has more than he has. 

“But Dean did drop me off this morning, yes.”

She looks happier at that, though he isn’t sure why. As long as Castiel can get to work, it can’t really matter to Nora how he does that.

“Well, good. You let me know if there’s anything I can do, okay? I feel really bad you slipped on milk like that in my house. And, hey, thank Dean for cleaning up so well. The place hasn’t been so clean in months.”

Castiel swears she winks again as she leaves, but he’s too busy wondering why Dean went with that cover story to pay it much mind. Perhaps, to Dean, it was amusing. 

********************************

It’s a few days later that Nora mentions Dean to him again. In between times, she’s engaged Castiel in conversation more than once, has laughed at, though it’s possible she thinks it’s with, him about watching out when he’s mopping up near where the milk is kept, and has brought him painkillers more than once when she’s seen him wince. 

Castiel hasn’t wasted any of his own money on pills. He needs to save everything he can. He isn’t sure of much about humanity, but he knows he needs money for a car or a home or to secure food that’s more than what he eats at the end of the day rather than throw it in the trash. He only has to put up with this for a while, he tells himself, and he’ll have enough to gain a footing. From there, he can build. 

What’s a little pain in the face of future security?

He reminds himself of that a lot.

Now, Nora slides a mug of coffee under his nose and joins him behind the counter, her eyes crinkling as she smiles.

“Have you got any plans for your next day off?” she asks. “Dean planning anything nice for you?”

It occurs to him for the first time that Nora assumes Dean is still in the area.

“Er, no,” Castiel says, because he hasn’t got enough clues about the back-story. What if Dean said something to make Nora think he was local? “No. He, um, he isn’t…”

He has no idea how to finish that sentence. Dean isn’t needing Castiel for a case anymore? Dean isn’t interested in Castiel unless there’s a use? Heaven should have spent more time training Castiel to lie. Eons of sword-fighting has taught him nothing of use for his human life.

“Don’t tell me he’s not keeping a close eye on you,” Nora says, and it sounds like mock outrage. “And after he promised!”

“No. I mean, he… Um…”

This is ridiculous. Castiel can plan his route through a building full of enemies, but he can’t think his way into even the start of a convincing lie about Dean. 

“What exactly did Dean tell you? About…about us?”

Nora freezes. She frowns before slowly setting down her mug and turning more fully to face Castiel.

“He didn’t, really,” she says, and her words are slow, too. “I suppose, he just said he’d come when you called, because you were worried about Tanya. And that you wouldn’t need to stay over, because he had you. And the way he looked at you, I just saw it. You know?”

Castiel doesn’t know. He keeps quiet.

“It was all over his face when he came into the shop earlier that day,” Nora says. “I haven’t had any man smile at me that way since Tanya’s dad…well. Enough about that. But I could see you were… Look, you don’t mind me talking about this, do you?”

“I asked,” Castiel says, even though he didn’t, not really. Not about the way Dean looks at him. Still, part of any campaign is gathering intelligence, and if Nora is willing to share he should listen.

“Fair enough,” she says. “It’s not my place, I know, but you looked royally pissed off with him, to start with. Enough that when I saw him in my house I was all ready to throw him out. I thought maybe he’d turned up to ask you to take him back and you weren’t having any. But then he said you called him, and you left with him willingly, and… I was right to let you go with him, wasn’t I?”

Now she really sounds worried. There are so many currents here that Castiel can’t read.

“Of course,” he says, and watches her relax. A little.

“But you aren’t seeing him tonight? Have you seen him at all since that night?”

“Yes.”

And he could leave it at that. Nora’s nodding, relaxing even more, and he could just let her think it’s his own awkwardness that caused all the tension, that he and Dean are the loving, caring couple Nora thinks they are. 

“But not since he dropped me off at work the next morning.”

He does feel bad for the look on Nora’s face at that, but it lifts some weight to say it, to tell someone else Dean’s cut him off again. Not that he’s called Dean. And he could, he supposes. In theory. 

“Oh, Steve,” Nora says, and she sways closer to him. “Do you need a hug? Is this a hugging situation?”

And it makes him feel better, as he hesitantly opens his arms, that she has to ask. Perhaps it isn’t just him that could do with a guidebook. 

************************************

Two days later, Nora brings him a sandwich from a coffee shop in town. He hasn’t asked for it, and he isn’t sure why she’s brought it, but she hands it over so casually, along with a chocolate cupcake and a coffee which has an edge of caramel, that he just accepts it. 

He follows her out to the back of the shop and sits next to her on the wooden bench there as they eat, listening to her chat about Tanya sleeping really well the night before and about the messages she’s had from the guy she tried dating, and some of that echoing silence in him is filled. 

Three days after that, he stands outside the same coffee shop and feels his right hand clenched around his wallet. Nora has fed him more than once by this point, and he must owe her something. But the prices on the chalk board above the counter are higher than he was expecting, and the amount of money he’ll need to spend to buy her lunch is enough that he’ll have to adjust his savings plan, if he does this at all often.

Still, she brought him food and drink and company. 

She smiles when he offers her the food he’s bought, and leads the way out to the bench, and Castiel feels perhaps there are other kinds of security money can buy. 

***********************************

“No arguing,” Nora says a week later. “I’m cooking up my grandmother’s baklava and you’re coming round to try it. Don’t worry. I’ll make a coffee cake, too. That’s back-up, in case I ruin the baklava and we need our strength to run from Grandma’s ghost.”

“You think her ghost will attack you?” Castiel asks, alarmed.

“Only if I ruin her recipe,” Nora says, her eyes crinkling, and Castiel understands it’s a joke. “And I’ll make pork chops. All you need to bring is the wine, okay? And we can play board games and watch TV and gossip about men and it’ll be fun.”

She pats Castiel on the back once her mug is drained, leaving him at the counter.

“And don’t worry about any of that red or white crap,” she says over her shoulder. “I’ve always thought the ‘wine’ part is the important bit.”

That isn’t what the man in the wine shop Castiel finds says, and he turns up at Nora’s with the cheapest bottle the guy would let him purchase, telling himself he can justify not buying their shared lunches for a few days, surely, after paying for this wine.

Nora welcomes him with a hug, which is something they do now, and which Castiel has assured her he finds appropriate, and feeds him pork and potatoes and vegetables and his wine, and it turns out there is better food than a burrito. 

After eating, they leave desert for a while, with Nora joking it’s best to fight an angry ghost without such a full belly, and spend some time playing with Tanya. Nora even lets Castiel hold her again, and he smiles at her as Nora tells him about Tanya’s father. Just little things, such as the flowers he brought the day after Nora told him she was pregnant, or the music he listened to in his car, or the show he always shouted at on TV. 

“You must miss him,” Castiel says, and sees Nora’s eyes shine more than the lighting alone should make possible. He doesn’t mention it. 

“Yes,” she says, and there’s no hint of her tears in her voice. She’s a much better actor than Castiel. “It’s hard when someone you love leaves.”

He isn’t sure why she squeezes his hand right after saying that, but he does understand why she takes Tanya back. Cuddling with the baby is soothing, and Nora will need soothing after remembering what she’s lost. Nora needs that much more than Castiel does, after all.

“Tell me about Dean,” she says, after Tanya is back in her crib and they’ve risked the ghost, who has no reason to attack at all, it turns out. “If you’re okay with it, that is.”

It’s only fair, when she’s talked about her lost love, that Castiel talks about the man Nora thinks holds that title for Castiel. There’s really no reason for his throat to feel tight. 

“What do you want to know?”

“Whatever you want to tell me,” she says. “What music does he like? Did he ever bring you flowers? Anything.”

So Castiel tells her about some of the songs he’s heard in Dean’s car and about Dean’s smile lighting up a room and about how much Dean would love the baklava. He’s sure of it. And for a moment it’s like Dean is there in the room. He thinks maybe this is why Nora started the conversation at all, so she could feel Tanya’s father was with her by sharing memories of him with someone else. 

He lets the wine dull the edges of his thoughts and relaxes as the conversation slides into gossip about a manager from another branch of the Gas-N-Sip and barely thinks it strange when Nora drapes a blanket over him and tells him to sleep tight on the settee.

******************************************

He sleeps on Nora’s settee a few more times over the following weeks, after a meal with just her or, a couple of times, with more people, Marie from Nora’s school days and Jake from her time working in a flower shop and others, and every time the floor of the stockroom is colder and harder the next night. He thinks that must be why his shoulders ache on a rainy Tuesday morning, and perhaps why his back hurts. The dust must be what’s tightening his throat.

It’s almost lunch when Susie, who’s been working with them for almost two weeks, stops by the counter and peers at him.

“Are you feeling all right, Steve?” she asks.

It’s come to his attention that the other workers know about his friendship with Nora, but as far as he can tell there’s no jealousy there. If anything, they seem to be following Nora’s lead about checking he’s okay, which is sweet, if unnecessary. 

He opens his mouth to say he’s fine, but sneezes instead. It tears at the inside of his nose and his throat.

“Ouch,” Susie says. “Sounds like you’re coming down with a cold. Let me know if you need me to cover your shifts, okay? And drink plenty of liquids.”

He can’t let anyone cover his shifts. He needs the money even more now he’s socializing with Nora. A few sandwiches and bottles of wine might not seem like much, but he’s starting to worry about how much he’s saving. Besides, he has to find places to be when he’s not working during the day, and the library isn’t always open. 

No. He’ll just stay at work. If it is a cold, it’s not a serious illness. He’s seen Sam work a case with a cold before, once, and he’s sure he can manage.

He does get a glass of water from the break-room, and smiles at Susie when she tells him he’s being sensible. Perhaps he’s getting the hang of this being human thing after all.

**************************************

Nora presses her hand to his forehead, frowning up at him. She doesn’t look at all impressed.

“You’re burning up,” she says, and he almost wants to apologize, but she doesn’t give him the chance. “I know I’ve been tiptoeing round it a bit, but is there any chance Dean might swing by to take care of you? Or is he fully out of the picture?”

“Dean can’t take time off because I have a cold,” Castiel says. Well, grates out past the soreness and the phlegm. Colds are far worse than he was made to believe. “He’s busy.”

Probably. Not that Castiel has heard from Dean. But Dean is nearly always busy.

“Well, someone needs to look after you. I know it’s just a cold,” Nora says, “but an aunt of mine ended up in hospital because she was too weak to get out of bed to get water. No. You aren’t being on your own when you’re ill. Go on. Get yourself out of that uniform and round to my house. I’ll make you up a bed on my settee when I get in, okay, but for now you can at least use the throw as a blanket, and make sure you get a big glass of water to put on the coffee table before you lie down, okay?”

“I…what?”

He doesn’t get any more out before he’s coughing, and he lets Nora guide him out of the shop and into the back.

“You’re right,” she says. “What am I thinking? My place is too far to walk when you’ve got a fever. How about you sit down in here until lunch and I’ll drive you home. I’ll send Susie to get you a hot drink. Or maybe we should just jam you full of that honey and lemon stuff. I hate the taste, but it helps.”

With no idea what to do to stem the tide of her concern, Castiel sits where he’s told to and accepts the drink Susie hands him a while later. He isn’t sure why she strokes his hair back from his head, and from the look on her face she isn’t sure why she does it, either. 

“Er, I hope you feel better,” she says, flushing red, and vanishes. 

People are strange. Becoming one hasn’t made them any less so. 

******************************************

Castiel is warm and snug in his cocoon of blankets, and even the sweating and aching and coughing which make him so miserable can’t take away the fact that spending all day resting here is so much better than forcing himself to keep working. He even lets his worry over his earnings slip away in the face of an actual pillow under his burning head and the gentle noise of the TV in the background.

Slightly further away, he hears Nora moving around in the kitchen, and he’s sure that were his nose not blocked he’d be able to smell the soup she’s making. 

“Well, reheating and adding things to,” she said before she left to go and make it, as though that makes her care any less miraculous. 

Castiel didn’t know before that a cold could make the hinges of his jaw hurt as badly as his wrist did when a former brother twisted it so badly. Even drinking water hurts. But Nora is making such an effort to look after him that he’ll eat the soup, even though his stomach is roiling.

He narrows his eyes in an attempt to focus and stares at the TV.

It’s showing images of somewhere under a gray sky, and Castiel feels chill just looking at it. He pulls the blankets closer about his body.

“Nearly ready!” Nora calls out. 

Castiel feels sure he should answer her, but she told him the last time he tried that he shouldn’t hurt his throat. 

When she brings the soup out, she sets it on the coffee table and helps him arrange the pillow and cushions and blankets.

“Okay,” she says. “You be careful not to tip the tray. I think I’ve filled it up too far.”

The soup laps the edges of the bowl and it’s such a shame Castiel won’t be able to taste it. Getting used to the taste of food, to how strong it is when not filtered through his angelic senses, has been hard, but to lose taste all of a sudden has been disconcerting at best. 

Nora sits on the chair nearby and comments on the plot points of a soap-opera that comes on, giggling at one truly ridiculous moment and ranting about something offensive a few minutes later. It’s soothing. 

Castiel falls asleep sitting up, his bowl still half full, and it’s almost worth being sick to feel so cared for.

************************************

Nora leaves him the next day, ordering him to sleep and insisting she can come home at lunch so he gets something to eat. Castiel thinks perhaps he should look after Tanya, at least, and save Nora the childcare money, but she shakes her head. 

“You’re too sick to be caring for a baby, Steve,” she says. “You can make it up to me later, all right? I’ve been meaning to paint the decking out back. If it’s bothering you this much to let someone look after you, you can help me paint that when it’s warmer, okay?”

He finds it does help, to be given a means to pay her back, even if he can’t make good on it, yet. 

It’s perhaps half an hour before Nora comes home for lunch that Castiel sees the report on the news. People dead. People burnt to death, their eyes and organs liquid. 

When Nora comes home, she finds him sitting up, chasing the channels for more details, and she has to pry the remote control from his hand and insist he lie down.

“Whatever’s upset you, you can’t do anything about it, Steve,” she says, easing him down and pulling the blanket over his shoulders. “Even you can’t do everything, not when you’ve got a cold.”

It’s probably meant as a joke, because Nora can’t know what Castiel can do about the deaths, but he takes her words to heart. And he resolves to savor the comfort and care she offers him while he can. 

It pains him to leave without painting the decking, but he thinks he has enough money saved to buy that second, or tenth, hand car someone put up a card about in the shop, and he saw a suit for sale in a charity place. And he can always come back, when he’s helped with the deaths caused by his people, and spend an afternoon helping Nora paint her decking. 

For now, he lets her stroke his hair back and feels his eyelids closing, and he thinks that being human is not all about pain, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know if you like it. I may write Cas coming back to paint that decking at some point. What do you think?


End file.
